overpowering
overpowering is the present participle and gerund of overpower.
Meaning of overpower
Verb
overpower (third-person singular simple present overpowers, present participle overpowering, simple past and past participle overpowered)
- To subdue someone by superior force.
- We overpowered the opposing army within a couple of hours.
- To excel or exceed in power; to cause to yield; to subdue.
- Bright light overpowers the eyes.
- Synonyms:
- overbear
- To render imperceptible by means of greater strength, intensity, etc.
- The dish was OK, but the garlic slightly overpowered the herbs.
- To make excessively powerful.
- Rather than overpowering the characters or giving them some kind of slow-mo adrenalin abilities, Bloody Days does the most unexpected thing: it introduces a genuinely smart tactical system.2017 March 10, Adam Smith, “Reservoir Dogs: Bloody Days is smarter than you’d think”, in Rock Paper Shotgun, archived from the original on 23 Jan 2022
- Antonyms:
- nerf
Adjective
overpowering (comparative more overpowering, superlative most overpowering)
- That overpowers; so strong as to be overwhelming.
- The original family who had begun to build a palace to rival Nonesuch had died out before they had put up little more than the gateway, so that the actual structure which had come down to posterity retained the secret magic of a promise rather than the overpowering splendour of a great...1963, Margery Allingham, chapter 1, in The China Governess: A Mystery, London: Chatto & Windus, →OCLC
- The fact that approximately 40% of spoken language at the cafeteria was not English, suggests that the effect of the near 100% English signage is far from overpowering.2019, Li Huang, James Lambert, “Another Arrow for the Quiver: A New Methodology for Multilingual Researchers”, in Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development, →DOI, page 12
Noun
overpowering (plural overpowerings)
- The process of something being overpowered.
- Each of these concepts can be used, and is used, to justify the various overpowerings and abuses that are typical of capitalism as we know it, pace the Enlightenment thinkers and any other ideal model.2012, Andrea Micocci, Moderation and Revolution, page 327
Forms of overpowering
| Adjective | |
|---|---|
| comparative | more overpowering |
| superlative | most overpowering |
| Noun | |
| plural | overpowerings |
Words formed from overpowering
Questions about overpowering
- What does overpowering mean?
- Overpowering means that overpowers; so strong as to be overwhelming.
- What is overpowering the present participle and gerund of?
- Overpowering is the present participle and gerund of overpower.
- What part of speech is overpowering?
- Overpowering can be an adjective or a noun.
Words near overpowering in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: overpowering (page history and authors); overpower (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
Last updated:
Cite this entry: “overpowering.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/overpowering. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.